


Cold Shoulder

by karasunovolleygays



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Manga Spoilers, Post-Timeskip, Pro Volleyball Player Ushijima Wakatoshi, Tendou is a pissbaby about the cold, Ushijima Wakatoshi is a Good Significant Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:34:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27099715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karasunovolleygays/pseuds/karasunovolleygays
Summary: Satori decided to visit Wakatoshi in Poland in the dead of winter despite his general loathing of the cold and paid for his hubris. Fortunately for him, his credit was good with Wakatoshi.
Relationships: Tendou Satori/Ushijima Wakatoshi
Comments: 6
Kudos: 166





	Cold Shoulder

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tententendo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tententendo/gifts).



> This is a commission for the lovely Sam, whose love of this ship burns as brightly as my passion for Good Boyfriend Ushijima.

From the passenger seat of the tiny rental car, Satori frowned at the murky skies above Krakow. It was half past four in the afternoon, and it was already dark. The sunrise and sunset times were similar to Sendai, but thick gray clouds had blotted out the daylight long before dusk. “Does the sun ever come out here?”

Behind the wheel, Wakatoshi grunted. “I assume so. Just not right now.”

“That was a rhetorical question.” Satori chortled. “I’ve never seen so much snow in my life.”

And he hadn’t. As far as he could see, parking lots had mounds of plowed snow over three meters high, and every yard a thick coat of pristine snow. The roads were glistening wet but mostly clear, and the locals’ traffic sped on as if the heavens hadn’t opened up a king size frosty barf bag over everything.

Being cold was never something Satori liked to endure, but nothing could have prepared him for the pervasive chill that settled over the entire Polish countryside the moment the sun was out of view. His previous visits to Poland to see Wakatoshi during the volleyball season had been in Warsaw, where snow was plowed and salted as fast as it could fall, and during a more hospitable time of year. After a blockbuster signing deal, however, Wakatoshi had relocated to Kędzierzyn-Koźle, a small city whose name Satori could neither spell nor pronounce.

Raking his gaze away from the gloomy world outside the car, Satori turned his attention toward Wakatoshi, the only reason he would ever come to what had to be the coldest place on Earth. “So, uh, how’s your Polish coming along?”

“I can order at a restaurant without repeating myself, so that’s a good development.” 

The memory of Satori’s first visit manifested, and it made Satori guffaw. Somehow, Wakatoshi had managed to request a “man” sundae and scandalized the little old lady working the counter at the cafe. After a confusing conversation, Satori had put both of them out of their misery and ordered in mediocre German, a language she had understood more than Wakatoshi’s atrocious Polish.

Thoughts of ice cream sent a shudder through Satori. It was cold as balls, and someone couldn’t even pay him to eat frozen anything in weather like this.

Twenty minutes into the drive, however, the steady flow of traffic slowly started grinding to a halt. Satori looked out the windshield, and as far as he could see with the dense fog emanating from the idling vehicles, cars sat bumper to bumper with the occasional horn blaring their collective impatience.

“Oh wow, this is bad.” Satori pulled out his phone and opened Maps, looking for anything upcoming that could have obstructed traffic. “Well that makes sense.”

Wakatoshi quirked a brow next to him. “Oh?”

“There’s an accident a kilometer or so ahead and it’s blocking both lanes.” Satori frowned and scanned the map closely for any way to escape traffic limbo. He noticed an exit up ahead that led to a secondary road that was going more or less in the direction they were heading. “Ooh, take that exit up there. We can just go around.”

Frowning at the road, Wakatoshi murmured, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I don’t know the area very well. The secondary roads might be worse.”

“How do you get worse than a dead stop?” Satori nodded toward the nearby exit, and with a sigh, Wakatoshi crept the car on the shoulder until they were able to leave the log-jammed road. 

Following Satori’s directions at a crawl, the road appeared dark and glistening — hazardous even to Satori’s non-driver sensibilities — and almost entirely empty of traffic. He already had a bad feeling about this detour, but with Wakatoshi already white-knuckling the steering wheel, he kept that to himself. 

They puttered along slowly until an alert flashed on his phone. “Wakatoshi, pull over.” 

Despite his confusion, Wakatoshi complied, and they were alone on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere, and the traffic alert had just warned that the road ahead was closed due to a felled power line. “We have to figure out another way around. The road is blocked.”

A swarm of emotions flitted across Wakatoshi’s usually stolid face, unnoticeable to anyone who didn’t know him as well as Satori did, and the nerves in Satori’s stomach wrenched even tighter. 

“We should wait here for a while,” Wakatoshi stated, fingers flexing on the wheel in a rare show of nerves. “Downed power lines could be dangerous, and they won’t leave them like that for long. I don’t want to get lost.”

Every word made perfect sense, but a cocktail of cold and weariness won out and Satori pouted in his seat, arms crossed while he shivered. “This sucks.”

“I know.” Wakatoshi pulled gloves out of his jacket pockets and handed them to Satori. “Here. You need these more than I do.”

His better sense told him he shouldn’t accept them, since Wakatoshi was the one driving and needed hands that weren’t numb, but his trembling body won out and he stuffed his hands into the soft leather gloves. “Thank you.”

The car’s motor ran quietly, pumping barely-warm air into the cabin. “What’s wrong with this thing?” Satori grumbled, prodding the buttons and knobs on the climate control panel. 

“I’m not sure. I hadn’t noticed.” Wakatoshi put his bare hand over the vent and frowned. “It’s not even warm.” 

“I noticed,” Satori grumbled. His mood soured even more at the sound of his own snappish tone. It wasn’t Wakatoshi’s fault the rental car had a broken heater, nor was he to blame for the roads or the weather. Making him feel bad about it wouldn’t change their situation. 

That was easier said than done.

“Check the map for any convenience stores or restaurants nearby,” Wakatoshi suggested, and Satori didn’t miss the impatient edge creeping into his voice. “We can warm up and wait out traffic.”

Satori did just that, happy to move his fingers to keep the blood flow up. The spike of good cheer deflated when he saw the side road they were on didn’t have anything on their side of the downed power line. 

Wakatoshi didn’t ask for an answer; he got it when Satori shoved his head nose deep inside his sweater. “We can wait it out, or we can backtrack. Either way, it will take a while to get back to the highway.”

“I don’t care!” 

The words were sharp, and this time he saw Wakatoshi visibly flinch before a thunderous scowl took over. “That’s enough. I know you’re uncomfortable, and I wish I could do something about it, but I can’t. Stop being nasty. It’s beneath you.”

Few people on this planet could catch the threads of hurt in Wakatoshi’s admonishment, but Satori could. Wakatoshi rarely ever got angry, and in the fifteen years they had known one another, that anger had never been directed at Satori before. It was new territory that made Satori want to squirm.

He poked the rest of his face below the collar of his shirt and sighed. “I don’t know why I’m being like this. I haven’t seen you in person in months, and all I want to do is crawl into that gigantic Sasquatch size bed of yours and cuddle where it’s warm. Instead, I’m being a jerk.”

Satori heard something move in the cabin, and a few seconds later, Wakatoshi plucked the fabric from over his face while draped backward onto the fully lowered seat back. “I can’t fix everything, but I can fix this.” Wakatoshi unbuckled Satori’s seat belt and wangled him across the seat until he was sprawled out atop Wakatoshi’s broad chest. The familiar weight of Wakatoshi’s arms latched around Satori’s waist, sealing them together.

Already, Satori could feel Wakatoshi’s warmth soak into his limbs. With a sigh, he buried his face in the warm wool of Wakatoshi’s sweater, spidering his arms and legs around every piece of Wakatoshi possible. “ _Désolé j'étais un connard_.” [Translation: _Sorry I was being an asshole_.]

“I have no idea what that means. I’ll have to assume you didn’t insult me somehow.” 

Nonetheless, a smile began to creep its way back onto Wakatoshi’s lips. Satori craned his neck to steal a kiss and maybe a little bit of warmth. He grinned against Wakatoshi’s mouth when hands slipped into the back pockets of his jeans and pulled him closer. “What a way to warm up.” 

Wakatoshi’s fingers gently kneaded Satori’s bottom until he could feel his cheeks again. “I’m sorry we got off to such a bad start. I hope the rest of your visit will be better.”

Satori rested his cheek once again on Wakatoshi’s taut shoulder, and the steady drum of his heartbeat massaged his frayed nerves. “It’ll be perfect.”

“Good.”

With Wakatoshi’s body heat seeping into him, Satori’s early start that morning, rushing to stock up on as much product as possible for his store before his vacation, started to catch up to him. He nodded off atop Wakatoshi, shaken awake after a while by familiar hands. 

“Satori, we can get going now.” 

Sleep-logged eyelids dragged open, and Satori yawned loudly into Wakatoshi’s sweater. “Whazzat?”

Wakatoshi clapped him on the rear and chuckled. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the traffic report. The downed power line is cleared up, and we can go home now.”

 _Home._ It was strange to think about Wakatoshi calling this foreign country home when he still hadn’t made that leap for his own tiny apartment in Paris. But then he recalled something Wakatoshi had said years ago when they were classmates back at Shiratorizawa. _Home is where you want to be when you’re somewhere else, and when you’re there, you don’t want to be anywhere else._ It had been an offhand comment about not wanting to go to see his family on a long weekend, despite living just a few kilometers away. School had been home to him, not a house. Now some icebox of a city in Eastern Europe was it. 

The thought lingered long after they got back on the road, dwelling in his mind between translating his French-speaking GPS’s commands.

Once they arrived in Kędzierzyn-Koźle, Satori had to admit that the city was charming under the lights of the street lamps. Couples walked the pavements arm in arm, frozen breath wafting up in a halo around them, children clambering up mounds of plowed snow. 

This place was home for a lot of folks, Satori reckoned, and he could see how someone like Wakatoshi could carve out a life here. It was small enough where he could run into someone he knew at the grocery store, but big enough to have a volleyball team to keep his passion and livelihood engaged.

Satori’s theories were confirmed when a middle aged man in work coveralls waved from the apartment building’s stand of mailboxes. “ _Dobry_ _wieczór_.” [Translation: _Good evening_.] The two of them carried on a brief conversation in slow Polish until the older man headed back toward his apartment with a chortle and a smile. 

“Who was that?” Satori asked once they were at the stairs leading up to Wakatoshi’s second floor unit.

“He always invites me over when he barbecues.” Wakatoshi scratched at his temple while his brows knit in thought. “His wife says I’m _nacieszyć oczy_ , but I don’t really understand what that means. It translates to ‘eye candy’, for what it’s worth.”

Eyes wide, Satori coughed out a gale of laughter until his stomach hurt from the effort. Wheezing, Satori said, “You’re so cute, it’s almost rude.”

“What?” Wakatoshi hefted Satori’s duffel bag higher up on his shoulder and headed up the steps. “Why do you know what that means?”

Halfway up the steps, Satori paused. “Let’s just say I can relate.”

“Now I have to know.” 

Earlier woes about freezing his extremities off long forgotten, Satori trotted up the stairs eager to make sure Wakatoshi not only knew how much his neighbor’s wife found him pretty to look at, but how much he warmed up everything in Satori’s world.


End file.
